22may04

Iraq Desert Bombing Video Shows Carnage.

Fragments of musical instruments, tufts of women's hair,
and a large blood stain are among the scenes in Associated Press
Television News film of a destroyed house that survivors say U.S. planes
bombed during a wedding party.

It is the first known footage from the site of Wednesday's attack, which
killed up to 45 people, mostly women and children from the Bou Fahad tribe
in Mogr el-Deeb, a desert village on the Syrian border.

The U.S. military has said the target was a suspected safehouse for
foreign fighters from Syria and denied Friday that children were killed
in the airstrikes.

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt told reporters in Baghdad that U.S. troops
who reported back from the operation "told us they did not shoot women
and children."

"There were a number of woman, a handful of women, I think the number was
four to six, caught up in the engagement. They may have died from some of
the fire that came from the aircraft," Kimmitt said.

But an Associated Press reporter in the Ramadi area, at least 275 miles
east of Mogr el-Deeb, was able to identify at least 10 of the bodies
as those of children.

At the Bou Fahad cemetery outside Ramadi, where the tribe is based,
each of the 28 fresh graves contain one to three corpses, mostly of
mothers and their young children.

Relatives said they include those of 2-year-old Kholood and 1-year-old
Anoud, daughters of Amal Rikad, who was killed; of 2-year-old Raad and
1-year-old Ra'ed - whose headless body was found near his house - sons of
Fatima Madhi, who was killed; of Saad, 10, Faisal, 7, Anoud, 6, Fasila, 5,
Kholood, 4, and Inad, 3 - children of Mohammed and Morifa Rikad, who were
killed.

There also are photo images of dead children, but it was not possible to
determine if those victims were already accounted for by relatives.

In Washington, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Richard Myers
told Congress that "we feel at this point very confident that this
was a legitimate target, probably foreign fighters" who may have ties
to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian wanted for allegedly organizing
attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq on behalf of al-Qaida.

"The intelligence right now and what we found at the site, which were
weapons and the sort of things you might not expect at a wedding party,
were not consistent with that. They were consistent with folks trying
to come into the country, across the desert, in vehicles, staying
for the night, trying to make it into Iraq."

Several shotguns, handguns, Kalashnikov rifles and machine guns were
found at the site, according to Kimmitt.

But Bou Fahad tribesmen denied that any foreign fighters were among them.
They consider the desolate border area part of their territory and
follow their goats, sheep and cattle there to graze. In the springtime
they leave spacious homes in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, and
roam the desert.

Smuggling livestock into Syria is also part of a herdsman's life,
although no one in the tribe acknowledged that.

Weddings are often marked in Iraq with celebratory gunfire, but survivors
insisted no weapons were fired Wednesday - despite speculation by Iraqi
officials that this drew a mistaken American attack.

The first bomb hit the huge goat-hair tent - where male guests were said
to be sleeping - at about 2:45 a.m. Wednesday. The barrage didn't stop
until sunrise, witnesses said. Women and children were in an adjacent
one-story house and the men went to their nearby homes, they said.

After the first missile, Hamdan Khalaf ran in panic and hid in a
grassy area.

"In the morning, we went back to the hill and saw people torn apart,
attacked by the plane," Khalaf, who was not wounded, told APTN.

"We pulled them out of here," another man told APTN, standing on a
pile of stones as he picked up a stained green cloth that looked like
part of a young man's shirt. A severed arm lay in the rubble. "We took
them to hospital - straight to the fridge," the unidentified man said.

An angry voice in the background of the tape denounced President Bush.
"This is his terrorism," the voice said.

The body of what survivors said was the wedding's cameraman was pulled
out of the debris Thursday.

The footage also showed women in colorful clothes sifting through the
wreckage and carrying away blankets and other goods. Pieces of rockets and
bullet casings were strewn across the sandy plain, as were pots and pans
and a satellite dish. Partly charred pickup trucks and a water tanker
stood in the desert.

The attack left few survivors. About a dozen wounded were taken to the
town of Qaem, about 140 miles northwest of Ramadi and 130 miles north
of Mogr el-Deeb.

Witnesses, interviewed Thursday by AP in Ramadi, said revelers at
the wedding party began worrying when they heard aircraft overhead
at about 9 p.m. Tuesday. Then came military vehicles, which stopped
about two miles away from the village and switched off their headlights.
The planes were still overhead at 11 p.m, so the hosts told the band
to stop playing and everyone went to bed.

About four hours later, airstrikes began and continued until dawn
when two helicopters landed and about 40 soldiers searched the house
where the women had stayed and a second, vacant house. Soon after, the
two houses were blown up. Some witnesses said the houses were attacked
by helicopters; others said Americans detonated them with explosives.

Kimmitt confirmed that the operation was an air and ground assault.
"Those people on the ground identified no children as part of
that location that were killed," he said, adding that they reported
only adult deaths.

He also referred to the APTN video, shot Thursday in Mogr el-Deeb,
as well as separate APTN footage from Wednesday in Ramadi that showed
a headless body of a child and other bodies of children.

"What we saw in those APTN videos were substantially inconsistent with the
reports we received from the unit that conducted the operation," Kimmitt
said. "We're now trying to figure out why there's an inconsistency.

"We're keeping an open mind as to exactly what happened on the ground.
That's why we're continuing to try to gather all the facts; that's why
we're not ruling out anything based on information coming forward,"
he added.

This document has been published on 07Jun04 by the Equipo Nizkor and Derechos Human Rights. In accordance with
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